Our Lives May Need Tuning Up
Some time ago, while on a holiday weekend in London, I set out to go to one of my favourite churches in London, St Martin in the Fields. Over the last few years, it has offered me a quiet, prayerful space to begin my holiday. That morning, as I entered the church, I realised that it was not going to be such a quiet experience. At the front of the church, there was a big grand piano. Sitting or, rather, kneeling at it was a piano tuner. He was at his work, repeatedly striking one note and making minuscule changes in its pitch by … well, I’m not sure how he worked his magic!
I took my seat and closed my eyes, and I tried to pray. But the notes, the notes kept coming. I found it hard to ignore them in favour of my prayers.
After a while, I found that I let myself get caught up in the notes and in the
changes in pitch that I could just about make out. The sharp notes came down
in pitch. The flat ones went up. It became a way for me to pray.
In that prayer, it struck me that there are many ways that we can be a bit out
of tune in our lives. There are areas that are flat, where we experience a sense of being down, sad, low or lacking in energy. There are also areas of our lives where we are sharp, with ourselves and with others, too. In this way, we can be out of tune with ourselves and with others. We may need tuning up so that we can live harmoniously with ourselves, with others and with God’s plan for us. God, through prayer, wants to connect with us.
Brendan McManus SJ and Jim Deeds, Emerging from the Mess
Disordered Attachments
What Ignatius calls disordered attachments can get the better of us – pride, greed, fear, perfectionism, the insatiable appetite for instant affirmation generated by social media, over-stimulation, the expectation of 24/7 availability, failure to realise we’re stewards of creation and not its owner, obsession with prestige and status, the ‘I have more than you’ syndrome and all the other attractions that draw us away from God, ourselves and others, leaving us in a state of emotional turbulence, excitement and exhaustion.
My worth as a person is not determined by what I have. My material possessions, my academic attainments, my successes, my income and my bank balance do not define my worth as an invaluable and unique human person. My worth is not determined by what’s outside myself. The bad spirit, the enemy of my human nature, would have me believe otherwise. I’m infinitely richer than that. It’s so easy to get caught up in what we think we need and desire, but in the cold light of day we see the illusions for what they are. Solidarity with one another, rather than competition with one another, is God’s idea of what life is about.
Jim Maher SJ, Pathways to a Decision with Ignatius of Loyola
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We Are Active Partners In the Work of God
Something to think and pray about each day this week:
They looked down from heaven – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – with love for their people. They could see men and women of all races, colours, ages, faiths, holiness and sin. They knew help was needed for the human race and waited a long time before the time was right.
The Word of God, Son of God, born before all ages, became one of us. We know the rest of the story. One of the persons of the Trinity became one of us, so that we could become like them. Jesus, Son of the eternal Father, was born, lived and died like us. In death, cruelly murdered and then laid in the tomb, the Spirit became alive in him, and now the Spirit of Jesus and the Father is alive in each of us since baptism.
The life of the Trinity becomes very ordinary in the love, care and forgiveness we offer to each other. It’s also there in the ways in which we try to better the lives of the poor, the depressed and the anxious. It’s in how we try to teach a younger generation the best lessons of humanity and faith, and introduce them to this mystery of God. We are active partners in the work of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the world today.
Donal Neary SJ, Gospel Reflections for Sundays of Year A
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The Joy In Loving With Grateful Hearts
In summer, new beauty appears as the garden fills with colour. Flowers open, leaves unfurl, and trees start to put on their full summer foliage. Each day brings something new, especially in the perennial beds, and the gardener is busy indeed, feeding, watering, staking, mowing and nurturing the lawn, and dealing with the abundance of weeds and the surge of life among the garden pests who have found a foothold for themselves in the warming earth.
If the gardener is not careful, there will scarcely be time to enjoy it all; there is so much to be done to keep pace with nature’s summer abundance. It is important to take time between tasks simply to sit and wonder, to take a cup of tea or a cool summer drink out to the garden and just sit and stare and experience the beauty and the joy of it. These months, with their long, busy days and languorous evenings, are the time to tune in also to the beauty of our lives and to discover the joy there is in loving with grateful hearts.
Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, RSC, The Sacred Heart Messenger, July 2024
Pray to Become Like Mary
If May is a month of devotion to Mary, maybe we can pray to become like her in our hearts, awakening to her teachings so we can learn to appreciate everything through the lens of her love, wisdom and truth. Our words, emotions, actions, beliefs and feelings may return by conscious choice and divine decision to union with Source. To awaken each day with grace and a sense of peace, preparation, protection, love, and faith in our hearts is to live in the world in a brave and glorious new way. This compassionate and expansive mother energy is available each day and is offered to each of us so we can create a cohesive new earth, with all of God’s creation interconnected.
If we allow this vision to grow within our consciousness, both individually and collectively, perhaps we can release our patterns of divisiveness and instead embrace the essence of our infinite sacred Mother in our hearts and trust this to lead us home, to unity, wholeness and unconditional love once again. May this be our prayer to our Mother Mary during this month of May.
Andrea Hayes, The Sacred Heart Messenger, May 2024
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Forgiveness Leads to Healing
A person’s Christianity can be measured by the degree to which they are prepared to forgive. Forgiveness is one of the deepest expressions of charity. Forgiveness leads to healing. We carry around with us a lot of baggage. We carry the baggage in an invisible sack, and it can weigh us down and tire us. There is no inner peace. We carry wounds, scars, bruises, and hurts from the past, resentment, anger and bitterness. The key to healing of this kind is forgiveness. Forgive, and the baggage melts away. Let go of the chains that bind us. The chains around us have no lock, just our own grip. Let go, forgive, and they will fall away.
An unforgiving attitude, bitterness and a desire for vengeance poison the soul and increase anxiety and feelings of depression, whereas forgiveness heals and frees. It is healthy and wholesome, and it brings peace.
Who is the person whose hand you will not shake?
If you have hatred in your heart for anyone, try to root it out. Easier said than done. The important thing is to try. To try and to keep on trying is to be a saint.
Never are we more like God than when we forgive.
Terence Harrington OFM Cap, The Sacred Heart Messenger, April 2024
The Man With the Leaky Bucket
Don’t write someone off because they don’t come up to the mark in your eyes. They have value in the eyes of God, ‘for everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving’ (1 Timothy 4:4).
There is a story in Chinese culture about a man with a leaky bucket. It goes like this.
There was a man who carried two buckets, one on either side of him, balanced on a pole over his shoulders. Every day, he went to the well and filled the two buckets with fresh water. On his arrival home, one bucket was full, and the other bucket was half full. The full bucket was smug and proud of itself. The half-full bucket was anxiously apologising because it was leaking. ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry,’ said the man. ‘Have you not noticed the beautiful wild flowers growing on your side of the road as we walk back home? You have been watering them every day as the water leaked from your bucket.’
Anne Marie Sweeney, The Sacred Heart Messenger, February 2024
A New Fire Kindled Within Us
Easter tells us that Christ came to save us from our least selves. That is the gift as well as the challenge of the resurrection. The Gospels tell us that the disciples were scattered and shamed, broken and bewildered as a community. In a way, we are the very same. They were restored to a new life of message and mission.
Resurrection is about the healing and restoration of bruised and broken relationships between God and humanity, between one another and ultimately with the elements of the unique gift of creation that we have damaged and even destroyed.
Easter empowers, inspires and kindles in us a new fire of enthusiasm to become the gospel truth and evidence that we proclaim, witnessing to the continuing presence of the risen Christ among us now and always.
Easter is about the One who died abandoned, ‘so disfigured did he look’ (Isaiah 53:14), like the many rejected and bereft homeless and displaced people we meet today. The Lord now keeps us company on our own crosses, despite the stark silence, where we whisper or cry out in anguish, My God, my God, why have you deserted me?’
Even when God seems silent and distant, Easter tells us that we are not alone, but share together the risen life of the Lord.
John Cullen, The Sacred Heart Messenger, September 2023
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Jesus is Risen
Alleluia! This is a word you’ll be hearing a lot during this Easter season, which we are now entering. ‘Alleluia’ is a Hebrew word meaning praise the Lord. This tells us something about the focus of the season, which is characterised by joy and hope. Jesus has risen, and he invites us into this new life. The Easter event illuminates our lives as individuals and communities, calling us to be light for the world. The Season of Easter runs from the Easter Vigil to the Feast of Pentecost, a long period of fifty days. At this time of year, we are aware of the signs of new life around us. The days are longer and brighter, birds are singing, flowers are blooming. The new life that bursts from the earth reminds us that God is the source of all life and goodness. Easter is a time of new beginnings.
The Easter message is for everyone, whatever our situation. It is never too late to make a fresh start. The good news is that Jesus is with us. He is present when we pray and when we struggle to pray, when we are happy and when we are hurting, in the beauty of our world, which is always being made new, and in the goodness and love we share with others. As we make our way through this new season, we open the door and invite the risen Jesus to enter.
Tríona Doherty and Jane Mellett, The Deep End: A Journey with the Gospels in the Year of Matthew
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Blessed are Those Who Have Not Seen and Yet Believe
Thomas … thanks! For bringing honesty into our faith. He didn’t pretend that he was better than he was. He began by wanting proof and ended by being glad of faith. He is the patron saint of transitions and steps in faith. Faith is a journey. He is the saint of faith in our times. The community was the place he found faith, having lost it when he tried to go it alone. Then he came back to the community of faith and went on a journey of life that took him to martyrdom in India.
He also found Christ in wanting to touch his wounds. We find God when we enter into his wounds in the wounds of our world. In the faith community of the Church, we can keep our faith. Our faith grows here, too. Thomas looked for faith by wanting to touch the wounds of Jesus. When Jesus invited him to do so, he found he didn’t need to. He found faith in being present with the wounded Christ and discovered there his faith in the glory of Christ.
We can do the same. What was said to Thomas is said to us all: ‘You believe because you can see me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.‘
Donal Neary SJ, Gospel Reflections for Sundays of Year A
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